為師之道

What makes a teacher? It is customary for adults to forget how hard and dull and long school is. The learning by memory of all the basic things one must know is a most incredible and unending effort. Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that,watch an illiterate adult try to do it. School is not easy and it is not for the most part very much fun,but then,if you are very lucky,you may find a real teacher. Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of my luck. My first was a science and math teacher in high school, my second , a professor of creative writing at Stanford , and my third was my friend and partner, Ed Ricketts. I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three had these things in common:they all loved what they were doing. They did not tell, they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and unknown became knowledge. But most important of all ,the truth,that dangerous stuff,became beautiful and precious. I shall speak only of my first teacher because in addition to the other things, she brought discovery. She aroused us to shouting,book-waving discussion. She had the noisiest class in school and she didn't even seem to know it . We could never stick to the subject. Our speculation ranged the world. She breathed curiosity into us so that we brought in facts or truths shielded in our hands like captured fireflies. She was fired and perhaps rightly so, for failing to teach fundamentals. Such things must be learned. But she left a passion in us for the pure knowable world and she inflamed me with a curiosity which has never left . I could not do simple arithmetic but through her I sensed that abstract mathematics was very much like music. When she was relieved, a sadness came over us but the light did not go out.